Maxime de la Rocheterie on Marie-Antoinette

"She was not a guilty woman, neither was she a saint; she was an upright, charming woman, a little frivolous, somewhat impulsive, but always pure; she was a queen, at times ardent in her fancies for her favourites and thoughtless in her policy, but proud and full of energy; a thorough woman in her winsome ways and tenderness of heart, until she became a martyr."

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

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Unless otherwise noted, any books I review on this blog I have either purchased or borrowed from the library, and I do not receive any compensation (monetary or in-kind) for the reviews.

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Sunday, April 12, 2015

Liesel Meminger:
There once was a ghost of a boy who liked to live in the shadows, so he
wouldn't frighten people. His job was to wait for his sister, who was
still alive. She wasn't afraid of the dark, because she knew that's
where her brother was. At night, when darkness came to her room, she
would tell her brother about the day. She would remind him how the sun
felt on his skin, and what the air felt like to breathe, or how snow
felt on his tongue. And that reminded her that she was still alive. ~ from The Book Thief (2013)

I finally got around to seeing an excellent film that everyone already seems to have seen, called The Book Thief. Based upon the novel by Australian author Markus Zusak about a little girl
growing up in a village in Germany under the Nazis, the film depicts
ordinary people standing up to tyranny by defying unjust laws. While it is not a movie for
small children, I would highly recommend it as a good history lesson for older children and teens. The story is seen through the eyes of a child in a non-Nazi home. Born of Communists, Liesel becomes
loyal to her foster parents, who are hiding a Jewish friend in their cellar. We know, of course, that in many German
homes, children were made to report on their parents.

Like its source, the film is narrated by Death (voiced by
Roger Allam), who says at the start that he seldom bothers with the
living, but took a particular interest in young Liesel Meminger (Sophie
Nelisse). Liesel is first seen on a train in 1938 with her mother and
brother, en route to a destination that her sickly sibling never makes
it to. Neither does her mother, who may be headed to prison due to her
communist leanings, it’s later rumored. So Liesel arrives alone at the
doorstep of her new foster parents, housepainter Hans Hubermann (Geoffrey Rush) and his endlessly henpecking wife, Rosa (Emily Watson).

When it emerges that Liesel is illiterate — inviting
immediate ridicule from school bully Franz (Levin Liam) — kindly Hans
makes a game of teaching her to read. The first tome they conquer is one
she’d grabbed when it fell from a laborer’s coat at her brother’s
funeral: “The Gravedigger’s Handbook.” Later she dares rescue a burning
book from a bonfire of “decadent” works at a Nazi rally. This act
attracts the lone notice of the local Buergermeister’s wife, Frau
Hermann (Barbara Auer), who later clandestinely lets Liesel use her late
son’s personal library during her weekly laundry deliveries to that
imposing mansion.

In contrast, the Hubermanns barely scrape along on Rosa’s
laundering and little else; we eventually deduce that Hans’ perpetual
underemployment is due to his refusal to join “the Party.” As time
passes and wartime privations grow worse, their domestic situation turns
downright dangerous with the arrival of Max Vandenburg (Ben Schnetzer),
the fugitive son of a Jewish comrade who saved Hans’ life during WWI.
Honor-bound to hide the young man from the authorities, they nurse him
back to health, and he bonds with the fascinated Liesel. She’s sworn to
tell no one of his presence, not even best-friend neighbor Rudy (Nico
Liersch), though several times the secret comes fearfully close to
exposure.

There are modest setpieces: an air-raid, a worrying
house-by-house search by Nazi officials, Max’s second serious illness,
and Liesel’s hysterical response when Jewish prisoners are marched
through town. But “The Book Thief” spans these wartime years from a
microcosmic vantage point, seldom straying far beyond the main
characters’ ironically named “Heaven Street.” It’s to the credit of
Percival (best known for helming several “Downton Abbey” episodes) and
Petroni (“The Voyage of the Dawn Treader,” “Possession”) that they
refuse to artificially inflate the story’s key points for melodramatic
or tear-jerking purposes. By the same token, such intelligent restraint
may strike some as too even-tempered and slow-paced, touching our
emotions without heightening them in the way that often gets more
attention come Oscar time.

Rush generously provides the movie’s primary warmth and
humor; Watson is pitch-perfect as a seemingly humorless scold with a
well-buried soft side. Hitherto little-noticed New Yorker Schnetzer is a
real find, making Max a thoroughly ingratiating figure. (Read more.)

The thought-provoking film has already sparked many important topics
of conversation in our family, such as what is the duty of a Christian under an
anti-Christian totalitarian government. Unlike The Boy in Striped Pajamas, The Book Thief does not show the horror of the concentration camps. Liesel does not comprehend the full extent of the doom that awaits her family if they are caught hiding Max, but she understands enough to be frightened. The books and her own stories help her and others to deal with fear, whether it is the fear of arrest by the Gestapo or fear of the Allied bombs which drop in the night. The film ultimately celebrates the curiosity and resilience of a child who, in spite of loss and deprivations, is able bring life into a world filled with death, only because she is loved.

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